Disorder-induced metal-insulator transition in cooled silver and copper nanoparticles: A statistical study

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. The existence of a disorder-induced metal-insulator transition (MIT) has been proved in cooled silver and copper nanoparticles by using level spacing statistics. Nanoparticles are obtained by employing molecular dynamics simulations. Results show that structural disorder is not strong enough to affect their electronic character, and it remains in the metallic regime. Whereas, electronic properties cross to the insulating regime after increasing the chemical disorder strength, W/t. Then, based on scaling theory, we have found that the critical chemical disorder WC/t in which MIT happens for silver and copper nanoparticles are 24.0±1.1 and 22.3±0.9, respectively. Its universality has also been studied.